Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 has finally dropped on Netflix, fully revealing what happened on the infamous weekend that was meant to be about peace and love and turned into carnage.
Woodstock was originally a festival that was created in 1969, it was a renowned festival that brought people together through music as a sort of community was created where people respected each other’s boundaries and helped to give out water and food.
This all occurred as they enjoyed some of their favourite songs and artists. This is what was tried to be recreated in the year 1999 by organisers John Scher and Micheal Lang.
With a slight relation to an anti-gun violence message, they wanted this festival to be bigger, better, and even more memorable. This was definitely achieved, however not for the right reasons.
Netflix Woodstock 99
The new docuseries, which was announced back in 2020, looks at how one festival which was meant to embody the origins of the 1969 festival all went horribly wrong and literally descended into chaos, riots and flames.
Raw TV, whose credits include the Netflix documentary Don’t F**k with Cats, produced the series with BBH Entertainment, which released the Depeche Mode concert film Spirits in the Forest in 2019.
The Netflix synopsis reads: ‘Woodstock ‘99 was supposed to be a millennium-defining celebration of peace, love and great music. Instead, the festival degenerated into an epic trainwreck of fires, riots and destruction.
‘Utilizing rare insider footage and eyewitness interviews with an impressive list of festival staffers, performers and attendees, this docuseries goes behind the scenes to reveal the egos, greed and music that fueled three days of utter chaos.’
The series features unseen archive footage and intimate testimony from people behind the scenes, on the stages and in the crowds.
What Went Wrong at Woodstock 99?
As there were new organisers surrounding this festival, the Netflix documentary highlights how shortcuts on amenities were a frequent occurrence to save money, as at the end of the day compared to Woodstock 1963, this music festival was viewed as money-making machine.
This three-part documentary is an absolute must watch, after watching one episode you will most definitely watch the other two at once just to see how this festival of over 250,000 people went from the ‘best weekend of peoples lives’, to an event with contaminated drinking water, rubbish all over the ground, no toilets, and finally fires and looting.
The documentary meticulously shows the times when events during the weekend started to take a turn for the worse, and even has interviews with some of the most famous artists who were involved at Woodstock 99.
This includes fat boy slim, he highlights how he felt unsafe and was told to leave the premises shortly after the crowd had commandeered a truck and driven it into the tent where he was playing.
What’s interesting is at the end of this documentary you see how the organisers of this event depict what happened to the media.
They continuously suggest that things went wrong due to a handful of aggressive people causing issues, however, with real-life footage from the event being used throughout the whole documentary, you see that it was due to the lack of essential care necessities such as running water in toilets, that sent these people into a downward spiral. This then led to the mass destruction of property, as well as sadly the abuse of many women.
One festival-goer describes the weekend as a ‘Lord of the flies’ situation, and I think this is completely apt.
Due to the terrible conditions, people retreated to a primitive nature and were surrounded by this mob mentality.
This documentary is very well set out and even has interviews with the creators and leaders of this documentary, who seem to not take much responsibility at all.
This three-part documentary is available on Netflix now and I would say it is a must-watch.